LotRO Producer Announces Gundabad Expansion Delay, Explains Recent Communication Issues

An expansion is never late, nor is it early. It arrives precisely when it means to.

That might be the philosophy Standing Stone Games is adopting, as it was revealed yesterday that the next expansion for The Lord of the Rings Online, Gundabad, originally scheduled for the spring, would be delayed into the fall of 2021. Executive Producer Rob "Severlin" Ciccolini broke the news via a podcast, saying that the dev team had other content planned that it wanted to get out in the earlier part of the year before following it up immediately with an expansion. This included a new zone, which would be below max level, and possibly the brawler class.

Other important topics covered in the podcast include:

Legendary item revamp: "We're still looking at what we want to do" following a full pass of the system, said Severlin. The system is "complicated," both in terms of the code supporting them and how players have to deal with them. He didn't want to go into specific details, but the two goals are to make the leveling process better and let players have better options at the top end.

Mounted combat: "We're not planning on doing more mounted combat content," leaving the system mostly inside Rohan. Severlin still thinks turning is a little "clunky" and he'd like to work on players' ability to maneuver more easily.

Communication: Severlin addressed the much-criticized rollout of information preceding War of the Three Peaks. He said that it was "my fault" and that the general rule was not to talk about details about upcoming content until there was an "official page" for it. This year, due to back-end changes on the website, a Three Peaks page couldn't be finalized at the proper time. "Looking back, knowing what I know now," Severlin would have at least created a "forum account page" to distribute that information.

The New England Patriots' playoff chances: "I wouldn't underestimate Bill Belichick." Maybe they should sign Gimli to play running back.